Ultimate Sports

by Donald R. Gallo

  Part of him did not want to know. Suppose he beat out Billy Kovacs, the number two man on the Darden team? That would mean Coach Haggerty would be all over him. He’d expect Kevin to have a big season in his senior year, maybe even make it to the state championships. Just thinking about the way Haggerty put his gaunt face up next to yours and shouted “Go for the goal!” was enough to stop Kevin in his tracks.

  On the other hand he might not beat Billy Kovacs, and that would be depressing too. Kevin liked to think of himself as somebody who could run faster if he wanted to run faster. But if he went all out and still finished in the middle of the pack, it would mean he was just another mediocre high-school runner.

  Maybe I should just run a nice easy race and forget about this, Kevin thought. It would be less complicated.

  As he began the seventh of his eight laps, Kevin noticed that the chubby kid was still running—puffing and panting and lurching from one foot to another. “This is my bell lap,” he gasped as Kevin trotted by.

  Kevin chuckled at the idea of the little piano player in a race, but when he finished his workout he stopped to watch the other boy circle the track one last time. This was the kid’s fourth lap. Kevin had never seen him run a mile before, and he felt a sneaky sense of pride in his training partner’s accomplishment.

  The kid came chugging down the track, gulping huge bites of air and clutching his right side. But when he reached his imaginary finish line, he threw both hands into the air and held that pose for a moment before collapsing onto the grass. Kevin was about to jog over when he heard a voice in the stands announce: “And the winner in the Pudge Ball Olympics: Peter Whitney.”

  Kevin turned quickly and recognized three kids from the freshman class at school. “Hey, why don’t you bozos take off,” he said sharply, and looked at them long enough for the kids to understand that he meant it.

  The piano player was still lying flat on his back when Kevin reached him and extended a hand to help him to his feet.

  “Thanks,” the boy said, in a barely audible voice.

  • • •

  Hours after he had gotten home, Peter kept replaying the details in his head to see if there was something he had missed. First the fudge-brains from the ninth grade had made fun of him and the runner had taken his side. Next the older boy had waited around while Peter caught his breath. Then they’d walked down the hill together all the way to Peter’s house. It was almost like they were friends.

  But things had begun to go wrong as soon as Peter tried to ask him his secret. The trouble was he couldn’t figure out how to put the question in his own words, and so he began talking like the books his mother read to help her get ahead at her office.

  “Do you visualize your goals?” he blurted.

  The boy looked at him quizzically.

  “Some people do that,” Peter continued, eager to fill the silence. “But other people, they say that you should concentrate on developing the habits of a highly effective person.”

  The runner didn’t respond, so Peter felt compelled to keep talking. “Do you think your habits are effective? I mean, are they consistent with your aspirations? You know?”

  The other boy shrugged. “You still play the piano?” he asked.

  “Two hours a day,” Peter said.

  “You like it?”

  “No,” Peter said. “I mean, yes. I used to.”

  “But now you don’t?”

  Peter did not want to waste time talking about himself, but the older boy seemed genuinely interested. “Before we came here I had a different teacher,” he said, and as he did every time he sat down at the piano, he began to think of Mickey Ray.

  Mickey was his teacher back in Rochester. He taught part-time at the university and at night he played in clubs. Peter’s mother didn’t like him because he wore a ponytail. But everybody told her that he was the best teacher in town. She let Peter take lessons from him on one condition: that they play only “performance pieces”—compositions Peter might later play in a competition.

  But Mickey did not always abide by this condition. Every once in a while he would pull a new piece of music from his satchel, wink conspiratorially at Peter, and ask him to give it a try. This was how Peter got to know jazz and ragtime and gospel music.

  After Peter played through the piece once, Mickey would sit down on the bench beside him. “Next time,” he would say, “a little more like this.” And off he would go, playing the same notes in the same order, but making the piece sound more fluid, more powerful, more alive.

  “It is not about hitting the right key at the right time,” Mickey used to say. “It is about taking this baby for a ride.” Peter began to tell the other boy about Mickey Ray.

  “He sounds cool,” the runner said.

  “My teacher now is better,” Peter said. Actually he wasn’t sure if that was true. “Mr. Brettone is a superior musical pedagogue,” his mother had said. But lately Peter had found himself imagining that Mr. Brettone had tiny pickaxes attached to his fingertips and that each time he struck a key it would crack and crumble.

  They were standing in front of the house by the time Peter finished the story, and he was no closer to learning the other boy’s secret than he had been before all those grueling afternoons on the oval. Finally, just as the other boy was about to leave, he blurted: “How do you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Win.”

  “I don’t know anything about winning,” the runner said. “I just know about running.”

  Then came what Peter found the most puzzling exchange of all. “I hope you win at the districts,” he said as the boy jogged away.

  “Now what would I want to do that for?” the runner called back.

  • • •

  Kevin stood among the throng of two hundred runners packed into a clearing just off the first fairway at the Glen Oaks Golf Club. At the crack of the starter’s pistol they would all surge forward onto the manicured expanse of the fairway. The sight of all those bodies churning and all those bright uniforms bobbing up and down was so captivating that during his first two seasons Kevin had hung back at the beginning just to take in the spectacle.

  Not this year, though. He had decided to run the race of his life, and moments after the gun was fired, he found himself in the first fourth of the great mob of runners struggling for position as they tore toward the first green, where the course cut sharply downhill and into the woods. As he hit what he thought of as a good cruising speed for the first stage of the race, Kevin couldn’t help wondering if he would wear himself out too quickly or collapse on the grass at the finish line like that crazy little piano player.

  It was strange to be thinking of him at a time like this. Or maybe it wasn’t. Because what Kevin had been trying to figure out all along was whether excelling at his sport would somehow ruin it for him, the way excelling at the piano had ruined it for Peter. He half suspected that it would, but something the kid had told him that day Kevin had walked him home had given him a half-assed kind of hope.

  In the pack just ahead of him Kevin picked out Mark Fairbanks, Kovacs, and a couple of the top runners from other schools he had raced against during the year. No question—he was a lot closer to them than he usually was at the half-mile mark.

  • • •

  As the runner streaked by, Peter cheered and pointed his friend out to his mother. It had taken heroic persuasion to get Mom to come out to a cross-country meet on a Saturday morning, but now he was sure that everything would go just the way he planned. His friend would win the race and then Peter would introduce him to Mom.

  He wasn’t really certain what would happen after that. He couldn’t really explain why he wanted them to meet. It wasn’t so that Mom could see that he was making friends at school, because she thought friends only distracted him from his piano. And it wasn’t because he thought she would be impressed by a cross-country champion, since Mom didn’t really appreciate sports.

  Peter wanted them to mee
t so that Mom could see that he had a little of the runner in him, a little bit of the champion, a little bit of something that would lift him beyond the status of a “perpetual runner-up.” If he could only convince her of that, maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to keep sitting down alone at the piano. Or to keep sitting down to dinner with her.

  “He’s not winning,” Peter’s mother said as they watched the runners cut off the fairway and into the woods.

  “It’s strategy, Mom,” Peter told her, though he too was wondering why his friend was not at the head of the pack.

  • • •

  They were tearing along an old railroad bed at the top of a ridge near the fourth tee. Kevin’s legs still felt strong. His breath came easily. Fairbanks, who was fighting for the lead, was just a speck up along the train tracks, but Billy Kovacs was only twenty yards or so ahead of Kevin.

  I can take him, Kevin thought, but then I’ll have to hold him off the rest of the way. He hesitated for a second, and then decided to pick up his pace.

  • • •

  A single runner in the maroon Darden uniform came streaking out of the woods and onto the tenth fairway. There was only a half mile remaining in the race.

  “That isn’t your friend,” Peter’s mother said.

  Another runner in red and white charged out of the woods a few yards behind. In a few moments there were six, seven, and then eight other runners pounding the last half mile toward the finish line. Peter didn’t recognize any of them.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” his mother said, rummaging in her purse for her car keys.

  Peter felt as though he had bet a lifetime of allowances on the wrong horse.

  • • •

  As he tore out of the woods and onto the tenth fairway, Kevin began counting the people ahead of him, a feat made more difficult by the sweat dripping into his eyes. There were fifteen of them, as nearly as he could tell. The top ten finishers went on to the state finals. Somewhere up along the railroad tracks the desire to be in that group had seized him and he had picked up his pace. Now the wind burned in his lungs and the acid burned in his calves. His Achilles tendons felt like guitar strings being tightened with each footfall. He had less than half a mile to make up six places.

  He glanced quickly across the fairway and saw Fairbanks dueling for the lead with Pat Connors of Tech. In the crowd behind them he saw the little piano player. He was gazing in Kevin’s direction, disappointment etched on his face.

  I’m running the race of my life and it isn’t good enough for him, Kevin thought. He could feel the anger rising inside him. The race was ruined for him now, and he began to doubt his motives. Was he really running all out just to see what it felt like, or had the attention of this peculiar little kid made him hungry for more?

  Kevin wanted his sense of purity back. He wanted to stop caring whether he finished in the top ten. Something inside him whispered, “Slow down,” but instead he emptied his mind and kept running.

  Into that emptiness floated the memory of the conversation he and the little piano player had had just a few days before. The kid had been talking about his old teacher, the one who liked to take the piano “for a ride.” I can’t play, Kevin thought, but I can run. This can be my ride.

  Imagining that he was Mickey Ray, Kevin focused his eyes on the ground in front of him and sprinted the last two hundred yards, unaware of the screaming fans or the other runners on the course.

  • • •

  Peter couldn’t understand what the big fuss was about. The kid had come in eleventh. That wasn’t even good enough to qualify for the state finals, yet people were acting like that was a bigger deal than Mark Fairbanks, who had come in second. It was pretty cool to take a minute off your best time, he supposed, but still, eleventh place wasn’t worth all the cheering the Darden fans did when the kid crossed the finish line.

  Besides that, Kevin McGrail looked like hell. When he had glided up Putnam Street six weeks ago he had been so smooth, so poised. Now he was bent over, walking like he had a sunburn on the bottoms of his feet.

  Peter saw the boy’s coach, a gaunt man wearing a baseball cap, put an arm around Kevin’s shoulder. “You dug down deep and you came up big,” the coach barked.

  Kevin drew a few rapid breaths. “I was joyriding,” he said.

  “Joyriding,” Peter repeated to himself as he sat at his piano later that afternoon. “Joyriding lands you in eleventh place.” He stood up, opened the piano bench, and withdrew the exercises Mr. Brettone had assigned for that week. Beneath it he found The Fats Waller Songbook. Mickey had given it to him as a going-away present. Peter thumbed through the pages until he found “Your Feet’s Too Big.” Just the title made him laugh. And the way Mickey used to play it—

  He looked up to see his mother standing in the doorway. “What are we featuring this afternoon?” she asked.

  “Exercises for the left hand,” Peter said, and he sat down to work.

  Jim Naughton

  As a sports reporter, Jim Naughton covered the Mets for the New York Daily News in 1986, the year the Mets won the World Series. The holder of a BA. in journalism and an MA. in American history from Syracuse University, he has also covered sports for The New York Times and worked as a feature writer for The Post-Standard in Syracuse and The Washington Post. He is the author of three sports books for young adults: two novels and a biography of Michael Jordan.

  My Brother Stealing Second, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults, is about a sixteen-year-old baseball player who has trouble dealing with the death of his older brother, who had been a star shortstop. As he slowly starts to heal with the help of a girlfriend and an older male friend, he learns the truth about the mysterious accident in which his brother was killed.

  Taking to the Air: The Rise of Michael Jordan examines the basketball star’s life, as well as the social, cultural, and commercial forces that helped shape his legend. This was selected as a New York Public library best book for teenagers in 1993.

  Mr. Naughton’s most recent novel, Where the Frost Has Its Home, features a seventh-grade hockey player.

  In high school, Jim Naughton helped found his school’s cross-country team. But, he says, when he was growing up “my heart belonged to baseball. Unfortunately I wasn’t much good at it.” As an adult living in Washington, D.C., he now walks and swims for exercise.

  Harlow sees the potential in Randy, who is insensitive, impulsive, and in trouble. If only Randy can learn to control his temper…

  Fury

  It was after midnight when Harlow Fuller heard his dog barking in the front yard. He was in his bedroom, in the neat, five-room brick house he’d owned for years. He put down the magazine he’d been reading and went cautiously to the front door. A baseball bat stood in the corner behind the door. South Jamaica was a bit safer than ghetto Brooklyn, but here, where people owned their homes, the burglary rate was higher.

  Harlow peeked through the drawn curtains on his barred windows. He saw a large young man standing at his front gate. From behind the gate, Emile, Harlow’s huge Doberman, was barking wildly. Harlow went to the front door and opened it a crack.

  “Who’s out there? What do you want at this hour?” he called.

  “Uncle Harlow? It’s me—Randy Fuller.”

  “What are you doing out here in Jamaica?”

  “I can explain, if you let me in.”

  Harlow stepped outside. “Emile!” he said softly. “Place!” The dog stopped barking immediately and trotted over to Harlow’s side, where he sat down and looked up at his master. “Good boy,” Harlow said, rubbing the dog’s ears.

  “It’s okay, Randy,” Harlow called to the boy at the gate. “You can come in. Emile won’t bother you now.” He turned and went inside. Randy entered the yard and followed his uncle into the house.

  Once inside, Harlow said, “Well, let’s have a look at you, boy. Last time I saw you, you were… ten years old, I think. At your daddy’s funeral. You’ve sure grown.”
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  There was no denying Randy’s size. He stood two inches over six feet. When Randy took off his light wind-breaker, under which he wore a T-shirt, Harlow noticed the young man’s barrel chest and thickly muscled arms. He whistled softly.

  “Seems we got us a heavyweight in the family,” Harlow observed. “I can’t believe how much you look like your daddy. He could have been a fine boxer, you know. I offered to train him, but your mamma was dead against it.

  “So your daddy stayed on, driving a truck. And what happened? He gets hit by a drunk with no insurance. Some safe job.

  “I said that to your mamma at the funeral. Bert would have been safer in the ring. She hasn’t talked to me since. I’m not welcome at your mamma’s house. That’s why I’m so surprised that you showed up here. And at this hour. What’s going on, Randy?”

  Randy shifted in the chair, facing Harlow. “I’m in bad trouble, Uncle Harlow. Police are looking for me.”

  “What did you do, boy?”

  “Nothing, really. I was just there when something happened.”

  Harlow threw back his head and laughed loudly. “Half the cons in the joint say the same thing, Randy. Suppose you back up a bit and tell me just what went down.”

  “I was helping out a pal,” Randy said. “His name is… was Eddie Sanger. Some dude owed Eddie some money. Eddie asked me to come with him to collect it.”

  “Hold on,” Harlow said. “What did this ’dude’ owe Eddie the money for?”

  Randy avoided his uncle’s eyes. “That’s what Eddie does for a living—he loans out money.”